Everybody hates the gays
No matter the party. Obama admin to appeal strike down of law prohibiting gay marriage.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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July 10th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Sounds like they kinda had to despite disagreeing with the policy itself.
July 10th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
If they disagree with the policy, Sebastian, then why have they not introduced legislation overturning DOMA, which Bill Clinton signed, and why have they put off repealing DADT?
July 10th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Who says they disagree with the policy?
As long as the likes of DOMA and DADT are on the books, Dems can promise to support gays by repealing them. (And hence get a fairly large sum of money every 2 or 4 years.) I still wonder when the mainstream LGBT groups are going to realize that the Dems keep throwing them under the bus.
If DOMA was repealed, and DADT was repealed and some form of employment discrimination protection and maybe even housing discrimination were passed, there wouldn’t be much for the Dems to scream about while claiming the Republicans (you know, like Dick Cheney) hate gays. (Where is Employment Discrimination? You know that the law that would end employers fundamental/traditional right to fire gays for being gay.)
The really interesting thing will be to see if the conservatives will embrace the idea of State Rights – marriage should be handled by the states, and just like in mixed-race marriages the federal .gov shouldn’t be picking and choosing – or if they will abandon federalism because they think gays are icky. (Or whatever Huckabee said.)
Any bets?
July 10th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
The troubles of 4% of the population are not worth a hill of beans in this crazy, mixed up world ….
Just leave them alone. They already _____ like rabbits, married or not. If gay marriage were legal nationwide, we might see maybe a 100,000 — 80,000 between women.
July 10th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I am still amazed that they (the Dems) can pull this crap and throw the Gay folk under the bus again yet the next election most of them will back the Dems. . . . They don’t learn that it is all talk from the Dems and no action. . . .
July 10th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Once Chimpy McHaliburton is gone, The One will bring us our utopia! O.K. . . . maybe not.
July 10th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Part of the problem is the way the religious reich got behind Bush and the Republican party in 2004 – and the way Bush and so many R’s embraced that support with their actively anti-gay campaigning. It indelibly cemented the image of the Republican party as the anti-gay party in many people’s minds.
The other problem is the Repub’s history of actively repressing gays – DADT and DOMA are just two examples that are very visible – while Dems are at least saying they’ll help. Yes, they’re lying, but even many who realize that just don’t see any viable alternative.
July 10th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
The DOMA was not some repression of gays, despite what Jake or JD claim here. Look, Marriage is an institution thousands of years old and always defined as a joining of families for the protection of property, paternity, etc. It also has strong religious connotations. The DOMA is a federal recognition that “Marriage” has long-standing and accepted definition, all in order to prevent judges from twisting it to suit political ends.
What this judge has done here is toss that aside. If “Marriage” as a term can be made to change its meaning to suit the whims of the times or of judges then it ceases to have ANY meaning. Just look at how judges have twisted the 2nd amendment and the 1st amendment to deny our freedoms already.
The better approach is to simply create another defined term (say, “civil unions”), which has its own definition, which conveniently grants all the property rights of marriage but doesn’t offend sensibilities. That way you leave “Marriage” as it is, and can have an honest debate over the treatment of a self-defined minority who wish for protection of their lifestyles.
BUT – if you let judges keep making law, they will eventually start granting polygamous / polyandrous unions, or whatever else suits their fancy, AND they will go after churches, mosques, whatever and nail them for “equal protection” failings, thus destroying religious freedom.
Jake et al may claim repression like so many spoiled children whining when they don’t get what they want, but what they’re asking for is for the other 90% to have THEIR views repressed to satisfy a minority.
July 10th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Whose definition? There are plenty of churches that recognized and allow gay marriage. Are you saying the government should be deciding which religion is correct?
If you want to support DOMA with the argument that the definition of marriage is “thousands of years old,” you might want to remember that polygamous marriage has been the norm for far, far longer and long before monogamy. This also goes back to the question of “which religion’s beliefs should the .gov recognize.” There are plenty of current religions that allow or even encourage polygamy.
The government should get out of marriage entirely. If it’s not going to do that, then it needs to recognize all marriages equally.
July 10th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
If we have gay marriage than polygamy should be legal too. I also noticed that the judge ruled that the commonwealth has the right to make the decision whether gay marriage is legal. So that affords rights to the states to make the decision which several have. There are those who argue that the equal protection clause will force the other states to accept gay marriage however that will not fly. Seeing that polygamy was ruled out on US v reynolds in 1878 why did the equal protection clause not protect polygamy? Yes there were anti-bigamy laws at the time same as anti-queer laws today. What makes the queers any better than the polygamists??? The cases have a distinct similarity only the queers fight under the 14th amendment. Does anyone seriously think that polygamy would be acceptable in todays society? Does this mean that if Utah decides to make polygamy legal the other states have to accept it under the 14th amendments equal protection clause? Not hardly.
July 10th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
What makes the queers any better than the polygamists???
Err … the first (same sex marriage) is a promise for monogamy?
July 10th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Let me clarify my point here – don’t be thrown by my using polygamy to make a point.
We have a judge who has changed law to make policy. This is BAD THING. Anyone who has watched 1st and 2nd amendment cases over the years should be very wary of this thing, regardless of whether you agree with the sentiment of the decision. McDonald and Heller squeaked by with 1 vote, and we had 4 justices willing to set aside law for the sake of their personal policies and beliefs. The judge in the DOMA act has done the same thing, basically saying that the legislature has no right to define a legal framework (marriage). This is dangerous regardless of whether the outcome is desireable.
If you want “equal protection” to be defined to include gay marriage then you have to convince the legislature (Congress) to change the law, AND be prepared to lose if they disagree. You don’t want to leave this to judges because you don’t know what you’ll really get. Let a judge start defining things and you could get polygamy handed down or child marriage (which is something the strict Sharia Muslims would really really like and could argue under “equal protection” and the establishment clause).
Cheap shots about the “religious reich” only show an underlying prejudice against churchgoers and what they believe. It only shows how you hate the religious as much as you think they hate you, and are totally ignorant of history.
Regarding the historical definition of marriage Jake, I think I made it pretty clear. Congress was codifying the only form of marriage that America had recognized for the previous 200+ years, as is their right as legislators (national self-determination and all that). Kinda funny that you think government should “get out of marriage” because it is the government who backs up things like divorce laws and compels insurance companies to recognize civil unions.
As for “recognizing all marriages equally” do you really mean that? Do you really think that the Muslim who brings in a 9 year old child bride/1st cousin should be “treated equally” with other marriages? After all “There are plenty of current religions that allow or even encourage polygamy.”
July 11th, 2010 at 2:00 am
Congress doesn’t have the power to codify marriage, only the states do. This judge has not “changed law to make policy,” he has simply noted that the Constitution does not specifically give Congress the power to define marriage, and therefore that power is reserved to the states. If the federal government is going to grant benefits based on marriage, it must equally recognize all marriages allowed by the states – including gay marriages from states that have chosen to allow them.
Declaring that unconstitutional laws are unconstitutional is one of the jobs of a judge.
If a person does not consent, that is not marriage, it’s slavery and rape. Children cannot give proper consent.
But if everyone involved is a consenting adult, then what is wrong with a polygamous marriage? Who does it harm? Why should it be any of the government’s business?
All those issues can already be handled through other legal procedures – .gov recognition of marriage simply grants them automatically. Divorce laws are a necessity of government recognition of marriage – otherwise all the details of divorce could be handled by appropriate contract law, just as all the details of marriage could be.
July 11th, 2010 at 11:34 am
First the gay population is more than 4% of the total. But I won’t argue that.
How big does a minority have to be before it is no longer OK to discriminate against them?
You know the conservatives usually bring up the “they are only X percent of the total” argument. Almost like they think individual rights should be subordinate to the needs of the group. You know, like the communists are always going on about.
And if marriage bothers you, are you less opposed to employment non-discrimination? Didn’t think so.
July 11th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Actually, the current mode of hetero marriage – where partners select each other, as opposed to marriages being arranged by parents – is less than 250 years old, and as a norm, less than 200 years old.
So do you want to go back to the traditional marriage, arranged by “Papa” with no regard for how you feel, or what you want?
And instead of talking about polygamy, and court decisions made over a 100 years ago, why don’t you set the wayback machine for the 1960s and consider interracial marriages. Outlawed in several states. Should those states have been permitted their bigotry? I’m sure the bigots think so.
July 11th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Forget it Deb, it’s Chinatown.
July 11th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I don’t hate gays, but homosexuality and ‘marriage’ is a contradiction of terms.
Marriage has ALWAYS been between man and a woman. And to pervert that for PC reasons is just as wrong as deigning the rights of gays to exist and live in peace.
And BTW, marriage is not a government function, it’s a religious one that goes back way before governments in the form we have across the world.
This is mealy a way for homosexuals to legitimize themselves as ‘normal’, a mere alternate lifestyle.
July 11th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
I think any two consenting adults should be able to pay $30.00, sign a fancy piece of paper, and then take all the good and bad that comes with it.
(I was being sarcastic with the 4%, paraphrasing Humphrey Bogart in the movie “Casablanca”.)
July 11th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Yesirree, it’s National Brotherhood Week all over again!
Paul, Skipsul, etc.: y’all point to where the Constitution gives any part of fed.gov the power to define, make, annul or dissolve marriages. C’mon, let’s see it!
…What, can’t…?
Let the States make up their own laws. If expanding who can get wedlocked is such an awful idea, it’ll be its own bad example. Have you no faith in your own preferred notions? Or are you merely afraid that — just like lifting gun bans — it will hardly change a thing for most folks?
July 11th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Jake:
Nonsense. Of course Congress has no power to trump state laws on marriage, but it has no obligation to defer to them, either, when it comes to matters of federal law. If Congress wanted to rewrite all (otherwise constitutionally valid) federal laws to define marriage to include only those that would be valid under the laws of Idaho, they could do that. If they wanted to revise federal law to recognize civil unions as marriages, or even to impute gay marriages where the state recognizes nothing, they could. Or they could rewrite federal laws to ignore marriage altogether, if they so choose. Congress is under no obligation to import state law into federal law. They generally do, but only out of comity, not because the Constitution requires it.
If you’re hanging your hat on the other constitutional argument, i.e., equal protection, you may well end up winning that way. But before you crow too much on that grounds, consider what judicial mincemeat the courts would have to make of the Fourteenth Amendment to get there (hint: Congress isn’t a state).
Zando Deb:
Making a baseless claim you can’t defend, and then following it up with “but I won’t argue that” is lame, lame and double-lame. Most studies put the gay population between 1% and 2%. If you have credible evidence that the real figure is higher (and no, following more recent peer-reviewed studies, the long-discredited, irreproducible Kinsey Report is not credible evidence), then produce it. If you don’t, you should withdraw your baseless assertion, not just throw it out there and then refuse to back it up.
Perhaps so, but there’s a key difference here. Outlawing discrimination by race was the whole point of the Fourteenth Amendment. Discrimination of any other sort was not on anybody’s radar screen. I doubt you can find evidence of a single *opponent*, let alone *proponent*, of the Fourteenth Amendment who anticipated that the equal protection clause would affect the rights of gays at all. Given the political climate at the time, the amendment would almost certainly have been worded differently if they had.
July 11th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
I’m trying to keep things civil here, but I keep getting insults tossed my way. Amazed that this is such a hot-button.
Jake, I have no faith that our court system would long defend 9 year old girls against unwanted marriage. I can guess that you’re a dedicated libertarian by your reference to contract law. The courts in other western countries are tending to endorse a lot more bad stuff under the guise of “religious freedom” than you may be aware, and Sharia law is already allowed in part in Canada and Europe. Where Europe goes, the US left wants to follow. I certainly agree that no 9 year old would be consenting, but I also have no faith that our judges would actually defend that girl. Just look at the Rifqa Barry case, or at the rise in honor killings even in the US.
Roberta and Jake, having “faith in my preferred notions” has nothing to do with it. I’ve not actually said I was against gay marriage here, or for it. The real issue is that now that the courts are involved the outcome will be ugly and imposed by judges – it is always bad when you have to go to court to get what you want. As for constitutional grounds, the commerce clause in its original meaning suffices.
“To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”
A uniformity of an accepted marriage definition actually suits the original meaning of “regulate” – regulate here means “make regular” or “make uniform”. Having a patchwork of marriage laws across the 50 states is a barrier to free trade as we can clearly see now where some states recognize it and some don’t. DOMA is in this regard constitutional, and therefore if you object to DOMA you should get Congress to change it. Relying on the several states to duke it out will make everyone unhappy.
Let me point out that at no time have I endorsed or rejected DOMA here. I have only endorsed the notion that Congress is legally allowed to pass DOMA and did so for sensible reasons, and I disagree with the judge who has declared otherwise. I believe that marriage is fundamentally a federal issue simply because to leave it to the states forever keeps it as an issue – just as happened with slavery and racial equality (we tried to leave those to the states and I don’t think anyone here would say the results were encouraging).
You want gay marriage, fine, get it done at the federal level, and without lawsuits. Get it done in the legislature and don’t leave it to judges who like headlines or who have agendas.
But recognize that a commonality of all accepted practices of marriage in American history has been 1 man + 1 woman, regardless of how the marriage was set up / contracted, or what races / classes were allowed to intermarry. In American history, marriage has always been 1 man + 1 woman. Until the last 3 decades this was never even questioned except by the Mormons, and it was considered so fundamental that it was never codified until the mid-late 19th century when lawmakers were busy codifying everything formerly contained in “common law tradition”. You don’t have to agree with the definition, but you need to recognize its existence and stop treating its defenders as bigot or evil zealots. Calling them names and suing them won’t bring them around to your view.
To now ask society that this definition be changed is difficult, but to use judges and courts and lawsuits to force this change is dangerous.
Now as an aside here for those who are still hung up on my references to polygamy – go ask your wives/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends/cousins if they really would like a poly relationship. Don’t think you’ll get many takers. I’ve used the poly issue as an illustration of something that an “open minded” judge could impose.
Now for some actual anthropological history here: Polygamy (or to be technically correct here, polygyny – 1 man, multiple wives) has been endorsed by many societies over the millenia, and those societies have universally been poor and repressive to women. There has never actually been a documented society of legal polyandry or polyamory. Allowing multiple spouses has always meant 1 guy with multiple wives and / or concubines, and in practice it has been mostly confined to the very poor and the very rich within societies where it is legal. Usually the middle class eschew the practice. Look at Gaza, Saudi Arabia, etc. and you see how the practice is used to fob off unwanted daughters while cementing clan alliances and so forth. Always very nasty to in practice. Now it could be that here in the USA we could make it more humane, but humans being humans I think it would just devolve into the way we see it work everywhere else.
July 11th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Roberta,
Well, show me first where the states have the power to define, make, annul or dissolve marriages, at least those marriages inside an established religion.
July 11th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Tam hast recht.
July 11th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Paul, the Tenth Amendment clarifies that the federal government is one of enumerated powers, while state governments are not. Thus, while it’s a perfectly fair question to ask what part of the Constitution authorizes the federal government to X, it’s a silly question to ask the same of the states. Were it otherwise, nearly every state law would be unconstitutional since the federal constitution hardly authorizes the states to do anything.
That said, Roberta is wrong because the federal government doesn’t define marriage for any purposes other than federal law. Where the federal acts within its enumerated powers, it is free to define marriage any way it wants – or to ignore it.
July 11th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Just to make the connections clear.
The decision based itself on the 10th Amendment, and said that Congress had no business interfering in something that was traditionally a state matter.
That logic would also apply to some other things, such as No Child Left Behind–about which Obama may not really care–and Obamacare–about which of course Obama desperately cares.
If the ruling stands, then you have a reinforced argument against Obamacare. If the ruling gets overturned, then it becomes that much easier to defend Obamacare when it gets challenged in the courts. Which is why, undoubtedly, Obama is appealing this decision.
July 11th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
There has never actually been a documented society of legal polyandry or polyamory.
Tibet?
July 11th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Link no longer workie. I’m not registering.
July 12th, 2010 at 8:11 am
There had never been actually a documented society with a government with strictly limited and enumerated powers, but we gave it a whirl. Obviously it was not evolutionarily sound. 😉
July 12th, 2010 at 10:00 am
The “religious reich” is well and alive, and has nothing to do with church going, but with imposing a very distinct reading of the scripture on the general population.
As for the judge’s intentions, I think he’s trying to achieve the opposite of what he ruled on paper. By overturning his ruling, the supremacy of federal law will have taken another step forward.Once the SCOTUS confirms DOMA is constitutional, DOMA can be legally changed by congress to explicitly allow gay marriage, and no one can complain.
July 12th, 2010 at 10:30 am
The funny thing is that if DADT is repealed then instead of being discharged, gays will be court martialed and then kicked out.
July 12th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Looks as though we got a little flame war going here in the comments section 😀
July 12th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
No its more like see a fire add some provocative but well thought out fuel. Oh and stand back.
July 14th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Paratrooper has a point.
Dump DADT, and the IMMEDIATE result is “Witchhunting for TEH GAYZ!!!”, as federal LAW (the UCMJ), not an Executive Order, demands that homosexuality not be tolerated in the military, and TEH GAYZ must be persecuted and run out with federal (often felony) convictions.
DADT was an attempt by Clinton to avoid enforcing the strong anti-homosexuality bans that had been in place as part of military law (passed by Congress, remember — whether it’s the old Articles of War or the current UCMJ, it is CONGRESS, not the President who sets the laws for the military) from the beginning of the nation.
All DADT does is say, “Unless you force us to drop our willing suspension of disbelief, we will continue to pretend we don’t think you are gay. That way, we don’t TECHNICALLY have to enforce the odious law we are all individually sworn to enforce.”
Of course, when the Democrats had achieved control of BOTH houses of Congress in 2006, they did not bother amending the UCMJ to strike down the anti-homosexuality laws in it. Nor have they taken any serious step to do so up to now.
Because it’s all a sham — all they want from TEH GAYZ is votes, money, and publicity. But the DNC doesn’t really care about them, especially since coming out strongly and actually DOING something concrete about gay rights would remove a stick they can use to drum up anti-GOP fever every two years, and would likely piss off key minority voting blocs who don’t, in general, favor gay rights.